Journal of a Living Lady #289

Nancy White Kelly


How can it be 2007 already? Just yesterday we were preparing for a new millennium. A lot of water has gone under the bridge in seven years.

In the last month of 2006, three notable people were buried. I have a personal note from one of them. No, it wasn’t from Saddam Hussein or James Brown. However, President Ford wrote me once. He was aware of my then precarious health and wished me well.

Maybe I should be sorry that he is dead. Honestly, I am not. He lived to be 93. That is a ripe ole age in my book. President Ford regularly attended church and spoke often of a relationship with God. His health had declined and it was time to cross the great divide. That time comes to all of us. The Bible says so plainly.

In high school, I memorized a portion of a poem written by William Cullen Bryan. It was entitled Thanatopolis. This is the last part.

“So live, that when thy summons comes to join
The innumerable caravan which moves
To that mysterious realm where each shall take
His chamber in the silent halls of death,
Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,
Scourged by his dungeon; but, sustain’d and soothed by an unfaltering trust…”

I liked that poem so well that I penned it in my then new Bible. Now the loose leather covers, with its dilapidated pages, reside in a sealed plastic bag among other memorabilia. My name that had been printed in gold is barely visible. Maybe one of my sons or grandsons will someday read the margin markings and notes in the back and be inspired.

This brings me to our best news of the New Year. We are going to be grandparents again. Charlie and Tori are expecting their second son in April. Micah will be two in February. Despite a tenuous start, he is doing fine and is an adorable specimen of the Kelly family. If I sound like a doting grandma, I am.

Lives end. New lives begin. It is the circle of life.

nancyk@alltel.net